- President-elect Barack Obama plans to announce his economic team on Monday as part of an effort to reassure markets and will name New York Fed President Tim Geithner his nominee for Treasury Secretary, NBC News has learned.
- Geithner was a U.S. Treasury Department official under both Bob Rubin and Larry Summers and has been with the Treasury since 1988. Geithner’s nomination is anticipated barring last-minute changes, NBC reported.
- Geithner has helped current Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his team manage the ongoing Wall Street bailout. (I’d say)
- "I would say the market is going to like it," said James Awad, managing director of Zephyr Capital. "[Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry] Summers was more controversial. People will view it as a safe choice, an experienced guy. "There’s a little bit of a question because he’s associated with the bailout," Awad added, "and that’s still a work in progress and not totally successful. There will be a few who’ll be upset because he’s associated with the TARP."
- He joined the Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations, serving as Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Rubin…
Rescue Plan Update
by ilene - November 23rd, 2008 11:45 pm
Here’s a quick update on Citigroup.
Plan to Rescue Citigroup Begins to Emerge
Excerpt:
Federal regulators were nearing approval of a radical plan to stabilize Citigroup on Sunday in which the government would soak up tens of billions of dollars in losses at the struggling bank, according to people briefed on the discussions.
The plan, which emerged after a harrowing week in the financial markets, would mark the government’s third effort in as many months to contain the deepening economic crisis. While the negotiations were in flux on Sunday night, the proposal, if applied to other banks, could set the precedent for other multibillion-dollar financial rescues.
Citigroup executives presented a plan to federal officials on Friday evening after a week-long plunge in the company’s share price threatened to engulf other big banks. In tense, around-the-clock negotiations that stretched through the weekend, it became clear that the crisis of confidence had to be defused now or the financial markets could plunge further.
Whether this latest rescue plan will help calm the markets is uncertain, given the stress in the financial system caused by escalating losses at Citigroup and other banks. Each previous government effort initially seemed to reassure investors, leading to optimism that the banking system had steadied. But those hopes faded as the economic outlook has worsened, raising worries that more bank loans were turning sour.
President-elect Barack Obama was also working over the weekend to shore up confidence in the rapidly faltering economy. Mr. Obama signaled that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than he had outlined during his campaign and planned to announce his economic team on Monday. Some Democrats in Congress, meantime, were calling for the government to spend as much as $700 billion to stimulate the economy over the next two years...
Under the proposal, the government would shoulder losses at Citigroup if those losses exceeded certain levels, according to people briefed on the talks, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified because the plan was still under discussion.
If the government should have to take on the bigger losses, it would receive a stake in Citigroup that could potentially hurt existing shareholders…
It was unclear on Sunday night exactly how the Citigroup arrangement might work...
Once the nation’s largest and mightiest financial company, Citigroup lost half its value in the stock market last week as the bank confronted a crisis…
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The Moral Dimension
by ilene - November 23rd, 2008 7:15 pm
This is a fascinating topic. 
Within the framework for our government, checks and balances were put in place to prevent concentration of power in one branch or one individual — analogous principles could be applied to our economic system. What evidence is there that laws and regulations relying on morality are ever effective?
"The Moral Dimension of Boom and Bust"
Courtesy of Mark Thoma, at Economist’s View. Excerpt from The moral dimension of boom and bust, by Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate, at the guardian.co.uk.
"This monstrous conceit of contemporary economics has brought the world to the edge of disaster":
The moral dimension of boom and bust, by Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate: After the first world war, HG Wells wrote that a race was on between morality and destruction. Humanity had to abandon its warlike ways, Wells said, or technology would decimate it.
Economic writing, however, conveyed a completely different world. Here, technology was deservedly king. … In the economists’ world, morality should not seek to control technology, but should adapt to its demands. Only by doing so could economic growth be assured and poverty eliminated.
We have clung to this faith in technological salvation as the old faiths waned and technology became ever more inventive. Our belief in the market – the midwife of technological invention – was the result. We have embraced globalisation, the widest possible extension of the market economy.
For the sake of globalisation, communities are denatured, jobs offshored, and skills continually reconfigured. We are told by its apostles that the wholesale impairment of most of what gave meaning to life is necessary to achieve an "efficient allocation of capital" and a "reduction in transaction costs". Moralities that resist this logic are branded "obstacles to progress". …
That today’s global financial meltdown is the direct consequence of the west’s worship of false gods is a proposition that cannot be discussed, much less acknowledged. One of its leading deities is the efficient market hypothesis – the belief that the market accurately prices all trades at each moment in time, ruling out booms and slumps, manias and panics. Theological language that might have decried the credit crunch as the "wages of sin", a comeuppance for prodigious profligacy, has become unusable. …
Mathematical whizzkids developed new financial instruments, which, by promising to rob debt of its sting, broke down the barriers of prudence and self-restraint. The great economist Hyman Minsky’s "merchants of debt" sold their toxic products not only to the…
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Buffet Put Watch?
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 10:49 pm
Adam Warner reports on a transaction in which Warren Buffett sold naked puts in 2007, betting that world markets would be higher in 15 to 20 years.
Buffett Put Watch?
Courtesy of Adam Warner at Daily Options Report
So guess who beat the rush to do some naked put shorting?
And I mean really beat the rush, like 2007 and mid teens VIX "beat".
This, from Jon Markman.
Shares of Warren Buffet’s insurance holding company are on the ropes this month, plunging 30% in part because the fabled investor dabbled in an area of the market he has long publicly derided: derivatives. And due to a tangled web of financial relationships, they may be taking Goldman Sachs shares down with them.
Investors are concerned about a $37-billion bet that Buffett made last year that U.S. and world equity values would be higher in 15 to 20 years than they were then, when the Dow Jones Industrials were trading around 13,000. Through his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett sold option contracts, known as "naked puts" to an undisclosed group of investors for around $4.85 billion, reportedly using Goldman as broker.
The buyers saw the puts as a type of insurance that would pay off royally if stocks fell over the next decade. They were seen by Buffett as an easy way to pocket a quick $4 billion-plus, which was booked much like an insurance premium, even though he is famous for scoffing at derivatives as "weapons of mass financial destruction."
As Jon notes, there are rumors that part of The Oracle’s "investment" in GS was de facto collateral on the trade.* Becky has no comment.
How bad is the trade?
Without knowing exactly when he put it on, what volatility he got, the exact length, et. al., it’s a little rough. Jon had some numbers. And there’s huge margin of error going out that far in time, as among other things, what volatility do you use?
So throwing all those disclaimers into the hopper, best guess was that these puts may have tripled in value against Buffett. And that’s possibly conservative as I pretty much took the lows of 2007 as his starting price, and didn’t run a particularly high volatility out a decade.
Now granted, $8 billion for Berkshire is not the end of the world. And in a sense it’s not fair to just look at one transaction, as it surely fit into a larger plan.
But still, ouch. Not going to be seeing quite…
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Major Damage
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 7:51 pm
Michael Santoli at Barron’s discusses falling stock prices and buyers’ paralysis, noting that this year, had it ended Thursday, would be "the worst since 1872." 
Major Damage
By MICHAEL SANTOLI, writing in Barrons.com.
This negative-feedback loop will be broken — but when?
Excerpt:
A FUNDAMENTAL STOCK PICKER IN TODAY’S MARKET must feel like the hotshot college quarterback taking his first snap opposite an NFL defense: The schemes are inscrutably complex, the margin for error slim, punishment for error large, the opponents are far faster and stronger than he’s accustomed to facing, and each has a powerful financial incentive to plant him a foot deep in the turf.
Oh, and the final drive almost always determines the outcome of the game — in stocks’ case with the final hour of trading painting the entire day’s tape. (Would the presidential-transition authorities have had this in mind Friday, when they leaked the likely nomination of New York Fed President Timothy Geithner as the next Treasury chief at precisely 3 p.m., on an options-expiration day, in time to invite a ringing rally? I’m not accusing, just asking.)
The velocity and ferocity of the market movement — mostly downward — on a tick-by-tick basis has induced a buyers’ paralysis disguised as patience…
Keith Lerner, a quantitative strategist at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, refers to this dynamic as "stock deflation," an ingrained expectation that prices will keep falling.
While this feedback loop is always eventually broken by an abundance of cheap stocks piling up knee-high as investors stand still, when this happens is unknown. But the longer this assault lasts, the less important it will be for a buyer to pluck the exact low or select the precisely right stocks, so nipped are prices and, in many cases, values.
The virtually unwitnessed level of damage in a short period almost defies hyperbole. After Thursday’s drop to an 11-year low on the S&P 500, the index was farther below its all-time high than at any time since 1949. The year 2008, had it ended then, would rank as the worst since 1872 at least. The S&P hadn’t been as far below its 200-day average since 1932. Nearly 40% of S&P 500 stocks were below $4 billion in market capitalization, the minimum new stocks must meet to be added to the index. More than 40% of the stocks in the Russell 3000 were trading below $10…
All this helps explain the wild 6.5% snapback to the upside in Friday’s final hour. At some point, the…
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Lame-Duck Economy
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 6:22 pm
Basically, Paul Krugman is pointing out that a lot can go wrong between now and the new administration taking power. Here’s an excerpt from Paul Krugman’s article, courtesy of Mark Thoma, at the Economist’s View.
Paul Krugman: The Lame-Duck Economy
The outlook for the economy is deteriorating, yet economic policy "seems to have gone on vacation":
The Lame-Duck Economy, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Everyone’s talking about a new New Deal, for obvious reasons. In 2008, as in 1932, a long era of Republican political dominance came to an end in the face of an economic and financial crisis that, in voters’ minds, both discredited the G.O.P.’s free-market ideology and undermined its claims of competence. And for those on the progressive side of the political spectrum, these are hopeful times.
There is, however, another and more disturbing parallel between 2008 and 1932 — namely, the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis. The interregnum of 1932-1933, the long stretch between the election and the actual transfer of power, was disastrous for the U.S. economy, at least in part because the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action. And the same thing is happening now. …
How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? The answer, unfortunately, is: a lot. … The prospects for the economy look much grimmer now than they did as little as a week or two ago.
Yet economic policy, rather than responding to the threat, seems to have gone on vacation. In particular, panic has returned to the credit markets, yet … Henry Paulson … has announced that he won’t even go back to Congress for the second half of the $700 billion already approved for financial bailouts. And financial aid for the beleaguered auto industry is being stalled by a political standoff. …
What’s really troubling … is the possibility that some of the damage being done right now will be irreversible. I’m concerned, in particular, about the two D’s: deflation and Detroit.
About deflation: Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s taught economists that it’s very hard to get the economy moving once expectations of inflation get too low (it doesn’t matter whether people literally expect prices to fall). Yet there’s clear deflationary pressure on the U.S.…
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Citi Never Sleeps
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 4:08 pm
Shares Falling, Citigroup Talks to Government 
Excerpt:
With the sharp stock-market decline for Citigroup rapidly becoming a full-blown crisis of confidence, the company’s executives on Friday entered into talks with federal officials about how to stabilize the struggling financial giant.
In a series of tense meetings and telephone calls, the executives and officials weighed several options, including whether to replace Citigroup’s chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, or sell all or part of the company...
The course of action, however, remained uncertain on Friday night, these people said, and other options may yet emerge. But after a year of gaping losses and an accelerating decline in share price, Citigroup, which has $2 trillion in assets and operations in scores of countries, is running out of time, analysts said.
After a board meeting early Friday morning, Citigroup’s management and some board members held several calls with Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, and with the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner, who later emerged as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury secretary.
As Citigroup’s stock sank during the day, falling 68 cents to close at $3.87, the Federal Reserve was carefully monitoring how much money corporations and other customers were withdrawing from the bank, people involved in the discussions said.
The Fed was trying to ascertain whether the tumult in the stock market could escalate into something worse...
But with Citigroup’s troubles opening a new chapter in the long-running financial crisis, government officials said that the Treasury Department was considering whether to ask for the second half of the $700 billion rescue fund approved by Congress in September...
As Citigroup’s fortunes diminished on Friday, Mr. Pandit, the company’s embattled chief executive, went on the offensive. He worked the phones and held a companywide call to shore up the confidence of anxious employees.
Later in the day, the company held a similar call with large corporate customers. On Sunday, Citigroup plans to run full-page advertisements in major newspapers that acknowledge “our financial markets have been tested in unprecedented ways,” but argue that the company has a broad range of businesses and enough management expertise to pull through. In a nod to the company’s slogan, the text concludes: “That’s why now, more than ever, you can feel confident that Citi never sleeps.”
Still, Citigroup’s executives are not expected to sleep much…
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Paulson’s Policies
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 3:00 pm
Michael Steinberg has a different perspective on the Citigroup "crisis of confidence" drama playing out this week — forget moral hazard and stop the equity prices from plummeting.
Treasury Secretary Paulson’s Policies Accelerate Citigroup’s Implosion 
Courtesy of Michael Steinberg at Click Broker
The New York Times “Citigroup Tries to Stop the Drop in Its Share Price” reports the latest post Lehman financial meltdown is due to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s abandonment of the original TARP purpose. At least the purpose he came to Congress with, whether he had any honest intent in his words or not. Mortgage securities were artificially supported by the premise that Paulson would create a market for toxic assets as Part 2 of the TARP. The banks waited in anticipation. Now trading is starting to resume without a safety net. This, along with renewed fears of consumer lending, credit card defaults and commercial mortgages have fed the latest bear raid on financial stocks.
The stock market has completely lost confidence in the reactionary Paulson and Bernanke’s Federal Reserve throw money at everything policy. They have both been so creative in their multitude of programs that no one understands their objectives. Only one objective is crystal clear: stockholders will suffer. As we entered Citigroup’s (C) crisis of confidence this week, the market clearly understood this. New York Fed Governor and likely Treasury Secretary Geithner needs to convince Paulson that any government support for Citigroup cannot hurt shareholders. A healthy Citigroup share price is imperative to restoring investor confidence in all banks. Just look at the fall in Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan (JPM) on Friday. Goldman Sachs (GS) dropped below its offering price of $53 in 1999.
Bloomberg “Citigroup May Get Government Rescue, Investors Say” reports that Citigroup capital is $50B over well capitalized. Deutsche Bank AG analyst Mike Mayo wrote that Citigroup’s $25B reserves and other resources “should be enough to cover estimated cumulative losses of $50 billion on loans.” There does not seem to be a clear indication that Citigroup is encountering a liquidity crisis. But, the renewed focus on consumers in the upcoming “depression” economy was enough to trigger the bear raid.
It is not enough for the government to add new capital to Citigroup. The government must restore confidence in the common stock equity. Falling common stock equity triggers ratings downgrades by S&P (MHP), Moody’s (MCO) and Fitch; and just as important shakes the confidence of depositors. That’s right, falling equity prices directly trigger bank runs.
Geithner’s…
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What to do about C?
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 2:34 pm
Referencing a NY Post article, HERE’S WHAT THE FEDS MIGHT DO TO HELP OUT CITI, Henry Blodget comments on the six ways.
Six Ways Feds Might Bail Out Citigroup
Excerpt: Reuters compiles six ways that the Feds might bail out Citigroup. It’s hard to see how any of them will save common shareholders:
More preferreds: The US Treasury Department bought $25 billion of preferred shares and warrants from Citigroup in October when it injected capital into banks under the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. It could buy more, boosting Citigroup’s capital and a renewed government willingness to support the bank, which could soothe investors.
This is probably the most likely scenario. Unfortunately, it will pretty much wipe out the company’s tangible book value (excluding preferred stock), which is what matters to common stockholders….
Loan or ownership stake: Another possibility is a bailout similar to the original $85 billion package for American International Group Inc. The government made a loan that would be the first to be repaid if the insurer went bankrupt, and took an 80 percent ownership stake…
Yes. And it would clobber stockholders.
Liquidation: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. could seize the bank. This could shelter the financial system from some of Citigroup’s toxic assets, but at tremendous cost.
Unlikely, in our opinion. The government has enough things to worry about without having to chop up Citigroup and sell off the pieces.
Guarantees: The government could guarantee all of Citigroup’s debt and derivative obligations. This could be a low-cost solution if investor confidence in Citigroup returns.
This won’t stop the additional asset writedowns…
Buy the worst assets: The government could buy Citigroup’s worst assets, perhaps at a discount, as the government’s $700 billion rescue package was supposed to do.
A new TARP. That will certainly improve Hank Paulson’s reputation.
Regulatory changes: Instituting a new short-selling ban, loosening mark-to-market accounting rules for bank assets, or halting trading in credit default swaps could provide a temporary boost to banks in general, and Citigroup in particular.
Short of a temporary pop, we don’t think any of these moves will help…
Full article here.
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Rally on Tim Geithner?
by ilene - November 22nd, 2008 1:20 pm
Trader Mark’s thoughts on yesterday’s last hour rally and Obama’s selection of Tim Geithner as his nominee for Treasury Secretary.
Rally on Tim Geithner?
Courtesy of Trader Mark, at Fund my Mutual Fund
This appears to have done the trick - it’s silly to rally that much on an announcement since the policies of Obama have been laid out firmly - and if the executioner was Geithner or Summers or Corzine or whomever - it’s a moot point. But this is a casino, not a stock market. I had Geithner as my pick for the next Federal Reserve President so I guess that is one prediction that will not be coming true. This guy is a politico through and through - I’d really of liked to seen someone who ran a business get this type of job - you know "real world" experiences aside from helping New York banks milk the US system. Anyone associated with any branch of the current Federal Reserve and their total lack of oversight should not have a chance but - oh well, that’s politics.
Should make for an easy transition from Paulson since he basically is at the epicenter of the big mess - so let’s see what they come up with together Sunday night to take Citigroup (aka AIG 2.0) off the table.
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Weekend Wrap-Up
by Phil - November 21st, 2008 11:36 pm
Well we only lost 450 points fro the week.
The way we seem to drop more than that in a single afternoon with great regularity makes this seem not so bad but it’s still 5% on the Dow, which is 43% off it’s highs of last year. There was really nothing in Friday’s action to get excited about - it was expiration day and one great way to get rid of your stock is to sell a ton of calls and then jack up the stock on expiration day so you get the whole lot called away at your price and let the poor call holder deal with the pain of selling it down the road.
So we need a lot more than a good afternoon to confirm a recovery and we’ll be watching the same levels we’ve been watching all week to let us know if this market is going to be naughty or nice for Christmas. On Monday we were determined not to get excited by anything less than 9,200 and we got nowhere near that as we put in new lows instead. I asked in Monday morning’s post if 8,500 is the new 12,500, where we can expect 1,500-point swings up and down around that range, as we did around 12,500 since we broke that level in December of 2006. It does seem as though we’ve pulled back the market curtain and found there is indeed nothing of substance there…
I pointed out Monday that we were only holding 8,000 based on the anticipation that the government was going to do "something" to "fix" the economy and this week was nothing more than an erosion of that confidence as we got no encouragement at all from the current administration. It made for some very ugly trading and it was horrifying to see that stocks we entered around Dow 8,200 with a 20% margin of safety were being stress tested so early in the cycle. Monday’s dip was caused by the revelation that Paulson would stop doling out TARP money, leaving a little in the checkbook for the next administration.
While I predicted that the strong dollar could drive oil back to $50 on Tuesday morning, I was still expecting there to be some sort of rotation into other sectors that would stop energy from taking down the markets but, sadly, we got none of that! What we really didn’t expect was to see…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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